Gail Alexan­der

The Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd has dis­posed of the bread which was re­called last week­end, us­ing mea­sures in­clud­ing com­pact­ing and oth­er process­es which will ren­der the loaves un­recog­nis­able.

This was con­firmed by the com­pa­ny yes­ter­day. Guardian Me­dia had con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny last Sun­day fol­low­ing last Sat­ur­day’s so­cial me­dia video show­ing a slew of the bread which was re­called.

In a sub­se­quent state­ment, Kiss said the com­pa­ny had re­called a num­ber of bread prod­ucts pro­duced last Fri­day due to pos­si­bil­i­ty that a piece of plas­tic may have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed a loaf of bread.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed it was high­ly un­like­ly that this oc­curred, but out of an abun­dance of cau­tion re­moved from Trinidad all bread that may have been af­fect­ed by the piece of plas­tic from Trinidad. The re­call didn’t af­fect any bread in To­ba­go.

Kiss as­sured there was no pos­si­bil­i­ty of glass be­ing present in any of its prod­uct since its man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es do not use any equip­ment con­tain­ing glass. The com­pa­ny of­fered to re­fund the full val­ue of a loaf/loaves to any­one who had doubts or con­cerns.

Af­ter a South con­sul­tant last Sun­day queried what would be done with the re­called bread, the com­pa­ny told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that Kiss deals with waste dis­pos­al com­pa­nies and dis­pos­al is done ac­cord­ing to high­est reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards in T&T.

It was con­firmed that the re­called loaves were be­ing crushed in a com­pactors and dis­posed of in a way which was not ac­ces­si­ble to hu­mans, “There is no risk of hu­mans ac­cess­ing it af­ter it is dis­posed of in this way. We un­der­stand the con­cern that may ex­ist that some­one may ac­cess it, but that won’t be pos­si­ble,” the com­pa­ny said.

This dis­pos­al process be­ing used is the same that’s ap­plied to any bread which is re­turned dai­ly.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that out­lets’ shelves were re­stocked yes­ter­day morn­ing.

There have been “very very few” re­quests for re­funds re­ceived, it was al­so con­firmed.

On pos­si­ble changes to pro­ce­dure, the com­pa­ny has stood by its op­er­at­ing sys­tems which were de­scribed as “in­ter­na­tion­al,”

Yes­ter­day, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who has fol­lowed the is­sue since it broke, said she had spo­ken to the com­pa­ny and its se­nior rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the mat­ter.

“They’ve giv­en the as­sur­ance of re­call­ing the prod­ucts and of­fered oth­er re­funds for peo­ple who bought them,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon al­so said she asked about what would be done re­gard­ing the re­called loaves. “They have as­sured that they ‘re-us­ing a waste dis­pos­al sys­tem that con­forms to top reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards and the prod­uct will not be recog­nis­able af­ter it’s treat­ed with,’’ she said.

But Diego Mar­tin chef Gre­go­ry Lind­say says while it was good that Kiss is­sued a state­ment he’s still dis­sat­is­fied with the mat­ter. He was among those who post­ed com­ments on the bread re­call.

“Haz­ard analy­sis of crit­i­cal con­trol points ref­er­ences phys­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants as in­clud­ing wood, plas­tic or glass,” Lind­say said in a video yes­ter­day.

Lind­say, of Diego Mar­tin, said he taught at UTT and the now de­funct T&T Ho­tel and Tourism School. He said he not­ed that ex­ec­u­tives of the com­pa­ny is­sued a state­ment on the is­sue last Sun­day.

“I saw the re­lease. But I am ag­i­tat­ed, I’m a chef and food safe­ty is all chefs’ stick­ing point. This isn’t about race or re­li­gion but phys­i­cal con­tain­ment of food,” he said

Lind­say said it was im­por­tant the sit­u­a­tion be han­dled care­ful­ly since Kiss has a mo­nop­oly on the mar­ket. He said he didn’t eat the prod­uct but his rel­a­tives do.